In the prior art, a solution in a single-key authentication mechanism in a communication network is generally an authentication solution based upon Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA), where a pre-shared key K is stored in a user and a corresponding Home Location Register (HLR)/Home Subscriber Server (HSS), the user accesses the network through a Visitor Location Register (VLR)/Mobility Management Entity (MME) or like; the VLR/MME requests an authentication vector from the HLR/HSS upon detection of the access of the user; the HLR/HSS generates and feeds an authentication vector back to the VLR/MME; and the VLR/MME authenticates the user against the authentication vector.
A primary drawback of the AKA authentication solution in the prior art lies in that only the specific HLR/HSS can generate and transmit an authentication vector to authenticate the user, and the user may fail to be authenticated when the HLR/HSS fails. Furthermore the existing AKA mechanism may not be applicable to a Peer to Peer (P2P) distributed network environment.